Grants talk:IEG/Medicine Translation Project Community Organizing

History so far

The history of translation of health content on Wikipedia is mentioned here but it is more documented elsewhere. Could someone write 3 sentences to show that already tremendous progress has been made? Also, I understand that Translators without Borders has done a word count of progress so far. Could some kind of metrics of progress be presented so that the scope and impact of this could be more easily imagined? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:12, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, just three sentences, how about links to three project pages? Here is the Meta Project for a proposed thorg: WikiProject Med, here is the English WikiProject: en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation Task Force, and here is the current initiative: en:Healthcare Information For All by 2015. Jane023 (talk) 09:12, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I'll try to get some metrics Bluerasberry, as for Healthcare Information For All by 2015 that is definately an organization I would try to contact to get help with the project. CFCF (talk) 15:16, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Already in contact with HIFA2015. We (WPMEDF) are a member. More outreach through them is definately a good idea. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:34, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

One example

This proposal should present one example case. I know it seems obvious to insiders, but show these things:

1. An English Wikipedia article
2. Its GA review
3. Its Simple English derivation
4. If possible, some online record of the translation request - I know this is done in private space on Translators without Borders, but is there something to show?
5. The file of its translation
6. Its pasting into another language
7. Follow-up by a native speaker for cleanup in Wikicode

There are lots of people who do not understand how this works, and an example could make this more comprehensible. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:12, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Example:

1. Common Cold
2. w:Talk:Common cold/GA1 Good article review Common Cold
3. [1] Simple English Common Cold
4. [2]] Translation to Persian accessible using the account available here [[w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/Adding content]
5. fa:سرماخوردگی FA

Might not be a perfect example as the simple English version is tagged as too complicated.

Is this what you meant? If so I can add something similar to the proposal.

-- CFCF (talk) 15:14, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Perhaps consider what should be a perfect example. What if it came to pass that a lot of people saw this example - is this what you would want to exemplify the project? It is probably time to start imaging what you would want 30 colleges in 5 countries to see if they only looked at one example. What if more than 30 colleges looked at this in the next 3 years? What if every college had one person who looked at this? Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The simplified version is more this one [3] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I say we go with w:HIV/AIDS as an example of an article from this project

1. w:HIV/AIDS
2. GA review [4]
3. Simplified [5]
4. TWB site [6] details on how to access here [7]
5. Added to Persian [8] (there is a page with an FA review in Persian somewhere) plus in many others

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:02, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Measures of success

These measures of success are listed:

• Increase the languages translated by 50%
• Increase the number of articles translated per year by 100%
• Get at least 100 shortened articles translated or ready to be translated
• Get at least 1 dedicated integrator in each language already translated
• Get at least 1 integrator in new languages to be translated
• Decrease failed translations to 0 (no content sitting in the pipeline)

The proposers should know best, but it is my opinion that none of these things are priorities. The translation project already with no budget has been astoundingly successful. If these goals are met then the project would merely become extra-astounding, but then remain unscalable due to being unknown and incomprehensible to outsiders.

The status quo of production is impressive without increasing but to complement what is already dependably done, create outreach materials to clearly explain the project so far. It would not be a wasted grant merely to document what has already been done, because in the grant and funding world work that is done but not documented is the same as work not done.

Anyone who understands this project is likely to conclude that it is critically important to the Wikimedia mission. The major problem is not that it needs even more production, but that it needs to be marketed better. If it were explained, then more partners would step up and increase production without this modest production project. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:12, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for all the great points. I think you're right, I'll think about how we can improve the application using them. CFCF (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree better metrics are needed. I think what this project should be doing is taking the list of articles at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT and producing a dashboard of monthly status that can be sent to all interested parties by email and to village pumps. What you need are 1) total number of articles actually produced and monitored by the project (I assume this grows monthly?), 2) the subset of this number that is available at all (checked or unchecked) in all participating Wikipedia languages, 3) the number of participating Wikipedia languages (including English), 4) the number of Wikipedia languages holding baseline articles (or are all translation baseline articles in English?), 5) the subset of the first number that have been incorporated through translation attempts into ANY secondary language Wikipedia 6) per participating Wikipedia language, the number of articles actually produced and made available by the project in the relevant language as a percentage of available articles in that specific language Wikipedia (from the list used for the first number). Jane023 (talk) 09:47, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Quick answer, those are great suggestions and I will keep them in mind. I think a monthly report could be a great idea once the project is up and running. Currently all translations are from English, because we have the most active community.

As for marketing as Bluerasberry brings up, I'm not sure as to how to put that in measurable metrics, but I'm open to suggestions. Organizations connected/involved etc.? CFCF (talk) 15:24, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Here are some measurable outcomes:

1. Creation of a press kit
2. Development of a photo package for promotion
3. One-page handout created for review and copyediting by a public relations professional
4. Creation of a brochure
5. Qualitative response of a focus group presented with the concept
6. Number of advertisement proofs created

The Wikipedia community has some great ideas but so does the advertising industry. Advertising works and it is the conservative way to raise awareness. This might be a project which can presume its future success now by building infrastructure, rather than organically growing and seeing if the day will come when the non-English world desires health content in local languages. I think more contributors are lost by not being sold on the existing outcomes than there are by understanding the existing outcomes, and not being persuaded that they matter. I do not feel that this project's biggest problem is that it needs more proof to convince people that it works, and this proposal as it is now is to create more of that proof. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Speaking from the Dutch perspective I know they feel that Americans tend to oversubscribe pharmaceuticals to cure medical conditions, whereas the Dutch tend to oversubscribe things like specialty diets and physical therapy and undersubscribe pharmaceuticals. So I think it is important to "sell" this project with some sort of acceptance rate dashboard to take away fears that the articles are "too American", asn this will pull in more contributors. It would be a shame to have articles lying ready for 3-5 years that will need updating before they can be implemented! Jane023 (talk) 19:00, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hello! Is it possible to state the basis for success measures? For example, "Increase the languages translated by 50%" - how many languages are at the moment? "Increase the number of articles translated per year by 100%" - how many articles are translated now? rubin16 (talk) 17:34, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Rubin16 I am not sure where the report is. As I said, I think that reporting this project is more important than expanding it. The results are all at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force/RTT. It looks like 30 languages have at least 10 articles, and there are more than 200 translated articles total. See for yourself. I know there is are word counts and other data somewhere. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:15, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

The biggest issue we are having right now is that in three languages (Polish, Arabic and Dutch) articles are not getting integrated in a timely manner. Others languages have articles that are stuck at PC. I have managed to recruit people to add or added the content myself in many other languages. More than just adding the articles however is needed. They need to be integrated. This means that links to them from other pages are needed. Adding redirects from synonyms is needed.

Me adding the content is simply not scalable and simple not possible in mid or larger sized Wikipedia. We must have local integrators for these languages. CFCF has taken this on in Swedish. We have great help in Persian and Hungarian were a number of articles have become featured. TWB wants to double the number of languages we are working in.

I have been working to recruit people in Dutch with no success yet. It is time consuming recruiting for each language as each has to be done independently. If the content just continues to languish in these languages I will request that translation stop into them as I feel guilty wasting the translators time if I cannot get local Wikipedians involved.

The next biggest bottle neck is me generating source content for this project. As I am spending much of my time dealing with the integration aspect (which has turned out to be much more difficult than I had hoped) I have had much less time to write / get articles in English ready. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:55, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions here on the talk page and make changes to your proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2014 begins on 21 April 2014, and grants will be announced in May. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Happy to see the community organizing approach

I know that integration of completed translations has been a bottleneck for the Translators without Borders medical project for at least a year, so I will be very interested to see if community organizing strategies can help :) I'm pleased to see this idea come to fruition - thanks for submitting this proposal, CFCF. Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

budgeting questions

Hello once again! The project in whole is quite clear to me but could you please make it more informative in some points?

• do you have timeline of the project? when and what works should be done? rubin16 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
• how many hours, do you think, project management and programming would require each? rubin16 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
• as I understand you would be performing project management, who will be developer? Have you already performed any search for them? rubin16 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
• what particular tech fixes do you plan to implement for the better work of the project? How do you imagine this pipeline? rubin16 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
• as I see, some prizes are rewards are planned - are you going to perform any wiki-events? Would you need any travel expenses? Who and how would get these rewards? rubin16 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Best regards, rubin16 (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, but to answer your questions:

• The timeline is over at least 6 months, with the work starting during the summer.
• The biggest portion of the project would be in management, while funds for programming will be used later on in the project. This is because we need to formulate what the needs are concerning the programming side of things. Ocaasi & Jmh649 are better versed in the specifics concerning programming
• The search has not yet been performed no, since we are not there in the process yet.
• We haven't discussed this yet, but it is quite possible that funds will cover travel expenses to for example Wikimania.

Best, CFCF (talk) 10:12, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Previous experience

I don't see a mention of the proposer's previous experience with community management. I dislike paying community members for normal wikimedia projects work including "community management", but I adamantly oppose paying people without previous experience. --Nemo 07:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

User has done community management on Swedish Wikipedia with respect to this project already. Hope is that they will take over this management for many other languages. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:04, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Translators exploitation

I oppose including translations in the measures of success, as that's work done by people other than you and usually volunteers. You'll only be adding value if you bring new editors, e.g. professionals who would not otherwise contribute; not if you just move existing volunteer editors' work from another area to your pet project. --Nemo 07:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Nemo bis It is my opinion that the work already done is one of the biggest Wikimedia success stories which exists. It would not have been done were it not for this project. I fail to understand why you oppose any statement that translation counts can be measures of success. Could you please explain more and in another way? It surprises me that anyone could look at this and not be very impressed. Why do you call this a pet project? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:32, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Measurable improvements in the quantity and quality of translations spearheaded by this project would, in my opinion, be a worthy inclusion as a measure of success. Motivating volunteers, new and old, is a difficult but necessary component of keeping the wiki communities alive. Mabeenot (talk) 23:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

If we move people from writing about television shows and pokemon to improving health content about HIV/AIDS and malaria yes IMO that is a success. But then as a physician who sees people die from lack of access to healthcare information in their own language and one who never watches tv as I am too busy trying to change this first bit maybe I am a little biased.

If we have professionals translating Wikipedia content and it just sits there in limbo as I cannot get the local language community involved and adding it as I simply did not have the time to do this for each of the 50 languages one by one. How am I going to convince new professional translators to join if I cannot get the work of previous professional translatorss added? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:12, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

If this is anyones "pet project" it is mine but it is no pet project with 100s of people involved. We already have 100s of amazing translators through TWB who otherwise would not be involved with Wikipedia. We have Enrique our project coordinator on the TWB side of things (whose boss I think has forgotten that they pay him and yet he spends nearly all his time on this). We have Ildiko who volunteers and has become an active Wikipedia [9]. In Persian we have User:Mehran who is leading integration in that language. We have excellent integrators in other languages.

In some First Nations language of the Americas we are first translating into Spanish as the available translators do not speak English. We have created the first articles in incubator for one of these languages (K'iche') 2.3 million speakers.

For East African languages we have received a small amount of funding from the Indigo Foundation. This has helped support a bricks and mortar translation center in Nairobi. Thus why we have so many articles in Swahili.

We have a group of Italians who have translated nearly all the articles through their own processes. I am heading to Italy in two weeks to speak in both Milan and Rome to physicians and researchers about Wikipedia and medicine and how to get involved. Travel expenses from the conference organizer not the Wikimedia foundation and me donating my time. Got back a couple weeks ago from Iran where I was meeting with local Wikipedians and speaking at a medical school. Travel expenses covered personally. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:37, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

As Doc James says there are a large number of translators working already, but the goal is to get more translators, integrators and editors to help out in the project. On the other hand there is no reason to get more editors if we aren't able to get more high quality translated content out there, which is one of the reasons why the translated texts are the base with which we can measure progress , even if there are numerous other things that can and should also be measured. CFCF (talk) 10:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Changes

On suggestion I made a few changes, the most important might be that I removed the programming funds from the proposal's budget. I did this because we will most likely use these funds late in the project, and I feel it is better to have a complete idea of what we need from a programmer. CFCF (talk) 20:40, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Medicine Translation Project Community Organizing

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.6
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	6.3
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	5.6
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	7
Comments from the committee: Definite potential for impact, translating existing medical articles into other language can have a great impact on the community as a whole and their access to medical information. Ideally executed, this project will help a significant expansion of medical content. Lack of coordination between writers and translators is a key issue to be solved to help improve medical contents across languages. Clearly has a good community support base with Wikiproject Medicine. The project plan is well defined and there are clear measures of success for this project. Some committee members expressed concerns that the project depends on external parties (translators) that are not involved in the project, and the extent to which the learning with this project is all one-way; pushing English-language knowledge across borders to non-English Wikipedia projects. It is hard to convince communities to trust another Wikipedia project, and this proposal is asking for non-English Wikipedias to accept structured and carefully monitored leadership from the English Wikipedia, without any exchange in the other direction. Looking at some of the failed translations, for example, we see there were already pretty good articles in the destination language, so the translation effort itself may not always be necessary. National organizations that want to improve content on Wikipedia for the benefit of public health and who can help with reliable sources for use in localization efforts may be helpful. Community organizing is a difficult job to do, and we’re lacking clarity in how much relevant experience and skills the proposer has in this regard. We expect and hope that the advisors will offer adequate help, of course. Budget details felt vague and questions about budget have not been answered so far.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with it's due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by the end of May. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 00:00, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Round 1 2014 Decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $10,000

Comments regarding this decision:
Thank you for making the budget adjustments and other changes in response to early feedback. We hope that this project will experiment with improved integration solutions to facilitate 2-way knowledge transfers with Wikipedia communities integrating these translations into their language-versions of Wikipedia. Looking forward to seeing more medical content made available to more people around the world as a result of this community-organizing approach!

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us.